LATEST LOG BOOK NOTES - January 11, 2016

LATEST LOG BOOK NOTES

January 11, 2016

Reception over the past 48 hours has been quite good on the low frequencies here at Mount Evelyn.


3255   SOUTH AFRICA. BBC - Meyerton. Quite a poor signal today at 1920 with some type of commentary program in English, the service is beamed to SAf, Jan 10.

3320   D.P.R.KOREA. Pyongyang BS - At 1925 with military songs, eventually marching itself to a sign off at 1930 after the local top-of-the-hour time pips. I could hear any signal from the South African Radio Sonder Grense after the Korean station had left the frequency, Jan 10.

3955   ENGLAND. R. Taiwan Int'l - Woofferton. German service with pop song programming at 1935, fair signal Jan 10.

3955   ENGLAND. KBS World Radio - Woofferton. S/on 2000 with German to WEu, fair signal on Jan 10.

3975   VATICAN. Vatican R. - SM Galeria. At 1940 with the Rosary in Latin, beamed to SEu, good signal till s/off at 2000 on Jan 10.

4765   TAJIKISTAN. R. Tajikistan - Dushanbe-Yangiyul. The Tajik Radio 1 domestic service with local traditional dance music and songs at 1907, fair signal on Jan 10.

4930   BOTSWANA. VOA - Moepeng Hill. On a morning when signals from other African broadcasters appeared to be well down, Meopeng Hill was booming through at 1900 with world news in English. Great armchair copy on Jan 10.

5015   USA. Overcomer Ministry - Okeechobee. Haven't heard the station here on this freq for some time now. But it's back again and noted at 1050 with a big signal and the usual "Bro" programming, Jan 10.

5905   GERMANY. Deutscher Wetterdienst - Pinneberg. (German Meteorological Service) First time I've heard this station. Noted at 2015 with a detailed weather report in German, read rather slowly, till s/off at 2030. A fair to poor signal into Mount Evelyn, but actually not too bad considering it's a 10 kW transmitter into a non-directional antenna. The transmitter is located about 15 km northeast of Hamburg. Broadcasts appear to have begun towards the end of October 2015.

5995   MALI.  RTV de Mali - Bamako. Via the long path, a fair level of carrier but with only short fragments of audio making it through the noise. Definitely French programming with talk (perhaps news or commentary?) at 0708. I checked with the Twente remote, not much better there. Nice to hear it coming into Mount Evelyn….but wished I could hear it better!! It seems to have ongoing transmitter problems that have not improved at all in recent years.

7254.92   NIGERIA. VoNigeria - Ikorodu. Hausa service at 0610 with interviews (sounded like an outside broadcast because of background chatter and kids playing), and occasional mentions of Nigeria. Station ID at 0630 and local string instrumental music to open a new talk program with occasional musical interludes. Then into the French service at 0700. First time I have heard this outlet in a long time. A good signal via the long path on Jan 10. Here's an excerpt of that broadcast:

ZL9A DXPEDITION SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED

It was only on the air for a few days, but the team that activated Antipodes Island in the New Zealand Sub-Antarctic with their callsign ZL9A proved that ham radio can work hand-in-hand with environmental restoration on Antipodes Island. This truely international team of radio operators included Cezar VE3LYC, Craig VK5CE, Stan SQ8X, and Bob KD1CT. A total of 8,650 QSOs were logged between January 6th from 23:49 UTC and January 10th when the station was closed at 17:10 UTC.

The aim was to set up two stations in two tents, and operate around the clock, using all bands between 10 and 40m, using CW and SSB. The equipment was, it has to be said, modest by some DXpedition standards and included three Icom IC-7000 and one Elecraft rigs, two multiband wire vertical antennas (10 to 40 m), one 400 W solid state amplifier, two laptops for logging, deep cycle 100 Ah gel batteries, and gas generators with battery charger.

Antipodes Island is located 750 km from the South Island of New Zealand. The background behind this DXpedition is quite interesting and too detailed to discuss here. But check out the IOTA Hunter (Islands On The Air) web site for more information on how this fascinating DXpedition came about. You'll find it at:  http://iotahunter.org/tour/antipodes-island-2016/

I was pleased to be able to monitor the operation on several occasions on 20m, including the excerpt below. As is often the case with these undertakings, expeditions often have a very hard time making rapid contacts because the stations chasing them don't always listen or obey the instructions. On this occasion, ZL9A was transmitting on 14260 kHz and listening up between 14265 and 14270 kHz. When he identifies and calls a station to make a contact, all others should cease calling so that the contact can be made quickly and efficiently. Yet in this example, many other stations continued to call over the top of a DL (German) station, making it impossible for the contact to be completed in just a few seconds. In the end, nobody wins because the DXpedition station is forced to waste valuable time trying to get the details correct, when he should have been able to move on and make many more contacts. 

Such is the life of a DXpeditioner! Anyway, here's a video of several minutes with ZL9A in action:




That's it for now. 73 and good DX to you all.

Rob Wagner VK3BVW



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